Wireless networks have grown increasingly in importance and have varying uses; as have mobile devices, personal computers and many other devices that utilize these networks. Determining the proximity of one thing to another is an important and challenging undertaking. But it is a concept and function that has many benefits. For example, the display on a personal computer (PC) has the highest power consumption of an idling PC system. It typically runs between 30-50 percent of the total system idle power. Aggressively turning off the display power can significantly increase the battery life of the system. The current approach is a user's customized timer threshold to turn off the display when the system is not receiving any input (keyboard or mouse). The timer is typically between 1 to 10 minutes. The low-end setting is annoying when viewing documents and high-end setting reduces power saving opportunity. Determining if a user was in proximity to the computer and therefore using the computer would be a vast improvement.
Thus, a strong need exists for techniques to determine user presence.
It will be appreciated that for simplicity and clarity of illustration, elements illustrated in the figures have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements are exaggerated relative to other elements for clarity. Further, where considered appropriate, reference numerals have been repeated among the figures to indicate corresponding or analogous elements.